The following sections outline several ‘techniques of the self’ that may provide a useful starting point for actually practicing voluntary simplicity. Voluntary simplicity, as readers of this website know very well, refers to an oppositional living strategy with which people seek an increased quality of life through a reduction and restraint of one’s level of consumption. This way of life generally involves providing for material needs as simply and self-sufficiently as possible, minimizing expenditure on consumer goods and services, and directing progressively more time and energy toward non-materialistic sources of satisfaction and meaning. In the context of overconsuming societies, adopting lifestyles of voluntary simplicity arguably provides a remarkably coherent philosophy of life with which to respond to the three problems stated above – ecological degradation, poverty amidst plenty, and consumer malaise.

Nevertheless, consumer societies are the very ones that relentlessly encourage ever-higher levels of consumption, and most of us probably internalize that message to some degree. If it is the case, however, that the escalation and expansion of consumer lifestyles is driving several of the world’s most pressing problems, then it may be that ethical activity today requires that we engage the self by the self for the purpose of refusing who are – so far as we have been socially conditioned to be uncritical consumers – and such a ‘refusal’ would be the first step toward creating new, post-consumerist forms of subjectivity. This attempt to live simply in a consumer culture should not be conceived of as something that has a destination, however; instead, it should be conceived of as an ongoing creative process. From this perspective, resistance to consumerism begins within the self, not beyond it.

The following ten techniques have been developed to outline ways of overcoming aspects of our identities, behaviors, and perspectives that may have been shaped, deliberately or by accident, by contemporary consumer societies. The aim of these techniques is to transcend, through self-cultivation, the subjectivities that have been imposed upon us by consumer societies and to create something new. It is important to note, however, that voluntary simplicity does not have anything to say about what form that ‘new self’ will ultimately take; rather, the purpose is to help break the consumerist mould of the ‘existing self’ so that new, post-consumerist forms of subjectivity can emerge.

1. Read about Consumerism and Voluntary Simplicity

The importance of reading about consumerism, to begin with, lies in the fact that many of the mechanisms of consumer society are not obvious and, for that reason, can escape our notice. But if those mechanisms are not recognized or understood, they obviously cannot be resisted. Consequently, we can find ourselves shaped by those mechanisms in insidious ways. For example, the complex concept ‘hedonic adaptation’[1] holds that once human beings have their basic material needs satisfied, further increases in material wealth can have short-term influences on happiness (the so-called ‘consumer buzz,’ of which we may be all aware), but little or no long-term influence on happiness (a phenomenon which may be much less obvious). That is, once human beings attain a modest material standard of living, evidence suggests that we end up ‘adapting’ to further increases in material wealth, which means that people typically find themselves no better off than when they were less wealthy. If this is so, and there is considerable evidential support for this phenomenon,[2] then this should affect the way we shape our lives, especially with respect to our pursuit of consumption. We might decide, for example, that if the pursuit of increased material wealth is unlikely to provide long-term satisfaction then that pursuit should not be the focus of our lives. But if we do not know about the process of ‘hedonic adaptation,’ then we cannot plan our lives with the aim of avoiding consumption that is wasteful from the perspective of happiness.

A second example of the subtle workings of consumerism – from the many to choose from – is known as the ‘Diderot Effect’ (named after the philosopher Denniss Diderot who was the first to write about the phenomenon).[3] The ‘Diderot Effect’ refers to how one consumer purchase can induce the desire for other purchases, which can induce further desires, and so on. The purchase of some new shoes looks out of place without a new outfit to match; a new car looks out of place parked in front of a shabby old house; painting the lounge can make the kitchen look even older; and replacing the sofas tempts one to replace the chairs too. This striving for uniformity in our standards of consumption is known as ‘the Diderot Effect,’ and it can function to lock us onto a consumerist treadmill that has no end and attains no lasting satisfaction. But if we are aware of this phenomenon, we can take steps to resist it, by foregoing the initial upgrading and thereby stepping off the consumerist treadmill. We can then do something else with our lives – something more ambitious, perhaps, than making sure our carpet matches our walls.

The point of these two examples is to show how consumerism can often lock us into practices of consumption that are wasteful of our time and energy (to say nothing of the waste of resources they entail). By dedicating some of our attention to the study of consumerism, however, we may deepen our insight into the world, and our lives, and this may well assist us in escaping consumerism and in the planning and creation of new, post-consumerist forms of life. By deepening our understanding of consumption and its effects, that is, we may find ourselves better able to live lives of what David Shi called, ‘enlightened material restraint.’[4]

As well as reading about consumerism, it is suggested that there is also great value in reading widely about voluntary simplicity. For those of us who have been educated into a consumerist form of life, within a consumerist society, it can be very difficult indeed to imagine that alternative forms of life exist.[5] In fact, so entrenched can we become in the consumerist form of life that we can resemble the fish that does not know it is in water. That is, we may not even recognize consumerism as consumerism – as one form of life among others – but assume instead that it is ‘just the way the world is.’ By reading about alternatives like voluntary simplicity, however, we can unsettle this assumption and expand our imaginations, and hopefully come to see that we have a choice in the way we live. We can change our lives, and perhaps begin changing the world, by changing our minds. Not only that, reading about voluntary simplicity can be self-fulfilling in that it can affirm and support the transition to a post-consumerist life. This is but an inflection of the old adage that what we give our attention to, we become. The choice, it would seem, is ours.

2. Keep Precise Financial Accounts and Reflect on Them

Although practicing voluntary simplicity is much more than just being frugal with money and spending less – it is also a state of mind – spending wisely does play an important role. In Your Money or Your Life[6] – a prominent text in the literature on voluntary simplicity – Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin provide elaborate financial exercises for readers to undertake which seek to provoke reflection on the real value of money and the true cost of things. Such exercises may sound mundane and a bit pointless – everybody assumes they are careful, rational spenders – but if the exercises are carried out with precision the results may well surprise, even shock. One might find that seemingly little purchases add up to an inordinate amount over a whole year, or over ten years, which may raise new and important questions about whether the money might have been better spent elsewhere, not at all, or exchanged for more time by working less. The aim of such exercises is not to create tightwads, but smart consumers who are conscious of the full cost of their purchases, all things considered. After all, as Henry Thoreau insisted, ‘the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it.’[7] When exploring voluntary simplicity in this light, one might well find that some reductions and changes to spending habits, rather than inducing any sense of deprivation, will instead be life affirming. Furthermore, it is often said that how we spend our money is how we vote on what exists in the world. Clearly, then, our relationship to money is an area that deserves close attention, for if we do not have a precise understanding of how we are spending our money, we can find ourselves misspending our money and thus our lives. Through the ‘technique’ of keeping precise accounts of our income and expenditure, however, we can bring this issue to the forefront of our attention and allow us to better negotiate a fulfilling and meaningful life in a market society.

3. Cultivate Non-Materialistic Sources of Satisfaction and Meaning

Voluntary simplicity, it could be said, is about progressively directing increasing amounts of one’s attention away from the materialistic side of life toward the non-materialistic side. But cultivating a deep appreciation of non-materialistic goods often requires a certain degree of training. This training can be conceived of as an investment, of sorts, in the sense that effort expended in the early stages of development are justified on the basis that they will have positive, long-term impacts on one’s life (and perhaps positive, short-term impacts also). Learning to play a musical instrument, for example – say, the cello – may require some investment in this sense before one can appreciate the joy of performance or the profound beauty that can emanate from a cello in the hands of a competent cellist. But once that degree of competency has been attained, the non-materialistic satisfaction that can flow from playing a musical instrument is essentially limitless, and perhaps, one might even say, infinite. Another example might be reading. The more one reads, the better one gets at reading (in the sense of reading more deeply). But once a certain degree of competency has been attained, books have the potential to provide us with an inexhaustible source of non-materialistic wealth, all the better for the fact that a book itself – which is, of course, a material object – can be shared or ‘consumed’ without limiting its non-materialistic re-consumption by oneself or another, again and again. The point of this technique, once more, is to deliberately cultivate satisfaction and meaning in life through non-materialistic pursuits, rather than materialistic ones.[8]

4. Work on Overcoming Status Anxiety

It is sometimes said that modern consumers spend their lives working jobs they do not like, to buy things they do not need, so that they can impress people they do not like. Whether this is an exaggeration or not is less important than the issue it raises about what motivates our consumption – in particular, the issue of whether or to what extent we consume for the purpose of seeking or maintaining social status.[9] There is in fact considerable evidence to suggest that status seeking and social positioning is highly relevant to consumption practices, especially in consumer societies.[10] But there are at least two problems with this approach to consumption: firstly, social positioning through consumption is a zero-sum game, in the sense that when one person’s social status is increased, someone else’s must have relatively decreased, meaning that overall social satisfaction is unlikely to change; secondly, a strong argument can be made that, ultimately, it is much more important that we have the respect of ourselves rather than the respect of others, especially since the former is within our control, and the latter is much less so. Accordingly, if we choose to care about what others think of us – and it is a choice, although it may sometimes be a difficult choice – we are giving up some of our freedom to define our lives on our own terms. It can be argued, therefore, that practicing voluntary simplicity implies cultivating an indifference to social status, which would involve constantly thinking about what is truly valuable in life and recognizing, perhaps, that it is more important to shape one’s life for the purposes of gaining self-respect than for the purpose of seeking the respect of others. After all, if one merely seeks the respect of others, one might come to the end of life and have succeeded in attaining that respect, but have little respect for oneself. A case can be made that such a life would not be a successful life.

5. Regularly Undertake the ‘Deathbed Experiment’

The ‘Deathbed Experiment,’ so-called, is a technique of the self (popular among the Stoics) that can assist in the evaluation of what is most important in life, including how important money, possessions, and status are to a well-lived life. The thought experiment can be expressed in the following terms: Imagine you are on your deathbed and someone asks you about which attitudes defined your life. What would you want to be able to say? The Stoics argued that this type of thought experiment is important for at least two reasons: first, because the technique of trying to look back on life from the vantage point of our life’s end can help us prioritize our time and attention today as effectively as possible; and second, it can help us accept without complaint those things we cannot change and prompt us to set about changing those things we can.

Taken seriously – and it ought to be taken seriously or not at all – the Deathbed Experiment can provoke us to reflect on life’s ‘big picture’ and what role our attitudes have in shaping it. In particular, the experiment potentially has great relevance to the idea of voluntary simplicity because it has implications on how we value money, possessions, and status. That is, it raises the question of what attitudes we will have toward these things on our deathbed. The purpose of considering this issue prior to lying on one’s deathbed is so that our conclusions shape our thoughts and actions today in the hope of avoiding regrets in the future.

One might suppose, for example, that a person on their actual deathbed rarely says, ‘I wish I had spent more of my life working to pay for more consumer goods.’ More likely, perhaps, at least in consumer societies, is that a person might come to the end of their life and have some regrets about dedicating too much of their time and energy toward materialistic pursuits, at the expense of various non-materialistic goods, such as time with friends and family, or time to engage in creative activity or community engagement. In short, the Deathbed Experiment is a tool or technique that can be used (repeatedly) to avoid the regrets of overconsumption. To paraphrase Henry Thoreau, we should aim to live what is life, so that we do not, when we come to die, discover that we had not really lived.[11]

6. Acknowledge Freedom by Imagining Hypothetical Lives

Freedom, as the existentialists often insisted, can be terrifying. Freedom can be so terrifying, in fact, that we can sometimes pretend that we are bound by circumstances to live the life we are currently living when, in fact, we are really just avoiding having to deal with the reality of our own freedom. Jean-Paul Sartre called this living in ‘bad faith.’[12] For those brave enough to face their own freedom, however, the technique of imagining hypothetical lives can be a useful means, not only of highlighting one’s freedom, but also of actually expanding it. This technique involves imagining various alternative futures for your life, futures that depend merely on an act of will to initiate. Imagine, for example, radically changing careers, or deciding to dedicate your life to this or that burning passion – imagine it seriously. Imagine also, perhaps, living a radically simpler life. What would life be like? What could life be like? How could we get there?

It may be, of course, that the life one is currently living is the best life, the freest life, the most fulfilling life – in which case the alternative lives imagined need not be pursued. But by imagining alternative lives, we can become more aware of the nature and extent of our own freedom. Perhaps, as Michel Foucault suggested, we may discover that we are freer than we think we are.

7. Practice Negative Visualisation

Negative visualization refers to imagining bad things happening in your life for the purpose of preparing yourself emotionally when, as inevitably happens, something bad does actually happen. Of course, negative visualization may also help us avoid those bad things happening in the first place, which provides further justification for this technique. But human life is such that bad things sometimes occur that are entirely out of our control. If we are mentally prepared for such occurrences, they will never be as bad as when they strike us out of the blue.

With respect to voluntary simplicity, it can be helpful to imagine losing our entire life savings, or losing our home in a fire, or coming home one day and discovering we have been robbed of our most prized possession. By imagining such events and considering the various ways we could respond to them, we are more likely to respond effectively should they ever occur. We would be more likely, for example, to say to ourselves, ‘how best can I live my life from now on, given these circumstances?’

Negative visualization is a central ‘technique’ of Stoicism.[13] The Stoics argued that it is not events that hurt us; rather, we are hurt by the interpretations we give to those events. This is important because, while we are not always in control of the events in our life, we are in control of the interpretations we give those events. For example, continuing the above hypothetical, suppose we arrive home one day and discover we have been robbed of our most prized possession. This event can be ‘dealt with,’ from an interpretive perspective, in various ways. One response is to become angry, sad, or spiteful, but they are not pleasant or desirable emotions, so responding with anger, sadness, or spite generally makes a bad situation worse. Another way to respond, however, would be to show gratitude that our prized possession enriched our life for as long as it did; another response again would be recognize that there are many people around the world who have almost nothing, and this can make it seem rather perverse to bemoan the loss of our prized, but superfluous, possession. The point is that the same ‘event’ can impact on one’s life in various ways depending the ‘attitude’ with which we choose to deal with it. Again, the event is out of our control, but the attitude is not. To draw once more upon Nietzsche – a Stoic in his own way – we should live in the spirit of amor fati and ‘love thy fate.’[14]

8. Anticipate and Avoid Consumer Temptations and Seductions

Everybody in consumer societies has probably had the experience of walking though a mall, or watching a television advertisement, only to discover that such experiences can give birth to new, artificially imposed, consumer desires. We may not have even known that some product existed, but after being exposed to it through sophisticated marketing techniques, we find ourselves wanting it – needing it. Not only that, just knowing about the new product can make the things we currently own seem a bit old and dated, even though, prior to discovering the new product, our current possessions were a source of satisfaction. Those same possessions can become a source of dissatisfaction.

Within consumer societies people can be exposed to as many as 3,000 adverts each day,[15] and the message implicit to every ad is that our lives are not good enough as they are, and that our lives can be improved if only we buy this or that product. It seems we are easily persuaded. But we need not be passive pawns in this game. If we come to accept that marketing and advertisements can seduce us ever-deeper into consumerist practices, then one ‘technique’ for escaping those practices is simply to anticipate and avoid as many consumer temptations and seductions as possible. For example: do not go to the mall; do not read unsolicited junk mail or glossy magazines filled with ads; watch as little television as possible, etc. By regulating as far as possible what our minds are exposed to, we can change the nature of our socially constructed minds and thus our lives. If we give too much of our attention to consumer products, however, we, ourselves, might become the product.

9. Keep a Journal

As noted above, one of the greatest legacies of Stoicism is the idea that, while we may not always be in control of the events that happen in our lives, we are ultimately in control of the ways in which we respond to those events. But although we may be in ultimate control our responses, sometimes we do not always respond how we would have liked, and sometimes our responses can become habitual rather than considered or deliberate, at which time our freedom, our power, to respond as we wish seemingly diminishes. Keeping a journal is a good way of having a conversation with oneself about the happenings of the day. By reflecting on one’s actions and taking a few moments to reflect upon one’s responses to events, one becomes better able to negotiate life in the future and respond in the most fruitful ways. If one does not reflect in this way, the same mistakes can occur over and over again, and self-development essentially comes to a halt. Having a regular conversation with oneself through the keeping of journal is likely to help us in all areas of life, but in consumer societies, it may be a particularly useful practice with respect to consumption. By critically reflecting on a regular basis upon our consumer purchases, consumer motivations, consumer insecurities, consumer expectations, consumer desires, etc. we are likely to become more conscious of the forces external to ourselves that conspire to turn us into mindless dupes who dutifully turn the cogs of the consumerist machine.

10. Ask Yourself, ‘How Much is Enough?’

This question is perhaps the central question of voluntary simplicity, and it is suggested that any attempt to practice voluntary simplicity must involve meditating upon it with exceptional dedication. As it happens, however, ‘How much is enough?,’ is an extremely unpopular question within consumer societies, as it is widely assumed that ‘more is always better.’[16] But it is a question that is arguably of revolutionary import, for it has the potential to provide the fertile soil for growing a post-consumerist form of life.

This question, however, leads to an unexpected twist in the exploration of voluntary simplicity. We discover that it is impossible to answer the question ‘How much is enough?’ until will have first answered a prior and perhaps even more important question, ‘Enough for what?’ This ‘prior’ question challenges us to specify the point of our consumption, for if we cannot identify its purpose we cannot know if our economic efforts have succeeded. Without some ‘chief end’ in mind to guide and justify our labor, we would merely be running in the ruts or acting for no conscious purpose, like the Brahmin who chained himself for life to the foot of the tree, but could not explain why he did it. The warning here, in effect, is that if we do not have a clear sense of what we are doing with our lives, or why we are heading in one direction rather than another, we will not be able to tell if our attitudes toward material things are keeping us on the right path or leading us astray.

Voluntary simplicity, however, can offer no guidance on the question, ‘Enough for what?’ – which is to say, we must each create as an aesthetic project the meaning of our own lives. The ethics of consumption explored herein merely insists that we must face this question when shaping our attitudes toward money and material things. Once we have developed some answer to that question, however, then we are in a much better position to answer the question, ‘How much is enough?’[17] Many participants in the Voluntary Simplicity Movement are discovering that much less is needed than was previously thought, and perhaps, one might hope, others will come to realize that they, too, are freer than they think they are.[18] By needing less, people may come to realize that they would not need to work so much to provide for themselves, and it is hoped that the ten ‘techniques of the self’ presented above, if practiced seriously, might assist in that realization. Liberated from the limitless pursuit of more consumption and the endless labor that it demands, post-consumers are then free to set about doing something else with their lives.

Trying to understand what that ‘something else’ should be may well be the most exhilarating struggle we ever find ourselves engaged in.

The text is available here: http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Voluntary-Simplicity-Samuel-Alexander/9780986453700

Just Enough is Plenty (AudioLecture)

Just Enough is Plenty (E-Book)

Abstract: Voluntary simplicity – otherwise known as ‘downshifting’ or just ‘simple living’ – is an anti-consumerist way of life that opposes the high consumption lifestyles prevalent in consumer societies today and voluntarily embraces ‘a simpler life’ of reduced consumption. As a practical matter, this living strategy characteristically involves providing for material needs as simply and directly as possible, minimizing expenditure on consumer goods and services, and generally seeking non-materialistic sources of satisfaction and meaning. Variously defended by its advocates on personal, social, humanitarian, and ecological grounds, voluntary simplicity is predicated on the assumption that human beings can live meaningful, free, happy, and infinitely diverse lives, while consuming no more than an equitable share of nature. That, at least, is the challenging ideal which seems to motivate and guide many of its advocates and practitioners. This paper examines the nature of the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, including its various definitions, justifications, and practices.

The full essay can be downloaded here.

After a silent hiatus of several years without composing a note – justifying my musical alias “Samuel de Silentio” – over the last few weekends I’ve written and recorded (at home) a short album and posted it online for free download. Most of the songs are ‘simplicity’ related, so I thought some of you might be interested in a listen. Music is a very personal thing, I understand, so the style of composition and production won’t suit everyone, but perhaps curiosity might tempt some of you to take a listen. I hope you enjoy these tunes, written in the spirit of celebration and opposition.

The songs are listed below. Please feel free to share them with others.

TUNES FOR TRANSITION

1. Getting and Spending
2. A Shadow Stirs
3. Two Lanterns
4. All Else Preparation
5. The Upside of Down
6. Furor Poeticus
7. Tunes for Transition

I’ve posted the lyrics to the songs below and the songs can be listened to and freely downloaded here. The music and lyrics are my own, except for the lyrics to the first song, which are a merger and adaptation of two poems on simplicity, one by William Blake (‘I rose up at the dawn of day’) and the other by William Wordsworth (‘The world is too much with us’).

I’d like to thank my musical collaborators Andy Gibson, Katherine Copsey, and Andrew Doodson for contributing harmonies and production advice on several of these songs. Thanks also to Haedon Smith for production advice. You guys are the best.

Finally, I would also like to thank the filmmaker Dave Gardener for selecting track two, A Shadow Stirs, to be on his Earth Day Fundraiser Album, available for purchase here. Please support Dave if you are able. He is producing an important film called “Growthbusters” due for release in a few months.

TUNES FOR TRANSITION – To listen click here. (N.B. track 1 is at the bottom of the page)

1. Getting and Spending

I rose up at the dawn of day

Get thee away get thee away

Prayst thou for Riches away away

This is the Throne of Mammon grey

Said I this sure is very odd

I took it to be the Throne of God

For everything besides I need

It is only for riches that I can bleed

I have Mental Joy and Mental Health

I have Mental Friends and Mental wealth

I’ve a girl I love and that loves me

I’ve all but Riches bodily

In the presence of Spirit night and day

It never turns its face away

This Spirit by my side does stand

And it holds my money bag in its hand

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers

2. A Shadow Stirs

Sense it in the world,

See it in your eyes,

Taste it in the air,

Know it in your soul,

Sense it in the world,

A shadow stirs.

See it in your eyes,

A shadow stirs.

Taste it in the air,

A shadow stirs.

Know it in your soul,

It’s time.

So will you quietly revolt?

It’s time.

This is my soul refrain,

It’s time.

Inviting all imaginations

It’s time.

To rise up from the embers again

Quiet revolution,

Feel it in your heart,

Falling from the heavens,

Burning underground,

Louder revolution,

A shadow stirs.

Feel it in the dark,

A shadow stirs.

Know it in the future,

A shadow stirs.

Know it in the past,

It’s time.

So will you quietly revolt?

It’s time.

This is my soul refrain,

It’s time.

Inciting all imaginations

It’s time.

To rise up from the embers again

3. Two Lanterns

Citizen poetic,

I find deliberately astray,

You seem a being without having,

As if having didn’t pay,

Wild mystical enigma,

Is the state of your inside,

It has you even as I sing ,

Devouring yourself alive.

With eyes of infinite affirmation,

To each their own black hole,

They glisten with free spirit,

And leak of radioactive soul,

Still something in their glow sings,

In melancholy keys,

The tune is of a mind gone diving,

Far too deep for me.

A discourse did ignite,

Two lanterns on a kite,

Cast out at darkness,

To carry forth light.

As for me a place to be,

Is none but than right where I am,

Passing through in awe,

What commerce cannot understand,

You could too see through this worldview,

If you saw what yours ignores,

Please don’t be quick to think I’m lost,

For simply wandering these shores.

Just bathe your eyes in these soft ocean skies,

Of blue, purple, and pink,

And you will find in this sublime,

That there are worse places to sink –

Crass rat race, not to my taste,

Out from the rush I stepped with haste,

It gave me twisted faces,

Only here I find my grace.

A discourse did ignite,

Two lanterns on a kite,

Cast out at darkness,

To carry forth light.

On the far side of the shore

Beneath a tree there sits a chair

Where I front every morning star

With questions God is meant to hear

Then later in the day

Like a mad Dostoyevskian clown

I chase my butterfly thoughts fragments

And try to write them down

A welcome cosmic accident

Of time and chance I trust

That we should meet this setting sun

Amongst all nature in the dusk

So come and join my meditations

Burning in the dew

Tonight I’d like to fight twilight

Inciting verse with you

A discourse did ignite,

Two lanterns on a kite,

Cast out at darkness,

To carry forth light.

4. All Else Preparation

There I was waiting

For something to transpire

As the world around me

Drifted by

It may arrive tomorrow

Then I can begin

Until then I suppose

I should just wait

Then I realized

That all else had been preparation

All those troubled times

When I thought my soul was on vacation

They were just paths that lead

To this exact location

Now I just need to keep on reinventing

This vocation

I found myself staring

Lost among the stars

As the world around me

Drifted by

Life is an accident

One after another

Oh no, I suppose

It must be fate

Then I realized

That all else had been preparation

All those troubled times

When I thought my soul was on vacation

They were just paths that lead

To this exact location

Now I just need to keep on reinventing

This vocation

There we were waiting

For the goods to just expire

As the world around us

Drifted by

It may all collapse tomorrow

Then we can begin

Until then I suppose

We should just wait

When will we realize

That all else has been preparation

These are troubled times

Calling timid souls back from vacation

They were just paths that lead

To this exact location

Now we just need to keep on reinventing

Civilization

5. The Upside of Down

Other generations had hunger

Other generations had war

But our generation’s

Facing so, so, so, much more

Other generations desired

Other generations had hope

Seems our generation

Is lost for which way to go

How about the upside, the upside,

Of down?

Other generations had surplus

Find and you will seek,

But our generation’s different

Upon Hubbert’s Peak

Call it a transition

Call it simplicity

All I’m asking from the depths of my nature

Let it be

How about the upside, the upside,

Of down?

It shouldn’t come as a surprise

Our civilizational demise

I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this muddle

I just know that there must be joy in the struggle

It might all sound crazy

Crazy it will be

When amongst the grassroots

We discover we are free

Don’t just be excited

Excited you should be

As we dig up cul de sacs

And plant a row of peas

How about the upside, the upside

Of down?

6. Furor Poeticus

Are we the one’s we’ve been waiting for?

The contradiction that has never existed before

As I awoke from a dream I spoke aloud ‘maybe, just maybe’

And tomorrow quickly turned into today

Time has imploded; the future is now

This defies the laws of physics, but it happened somehow

We’re marching, we’re marching, we marching, we’re marching

We’re marching over the edge, left right left

For all, for all, a poetic kiss

For all, for all, a poetic kiss

Goodbye

We are the one’s we’ve have been waiting for

Expired have all excuses that existed before

But celebrate this calling, bear this burden with smile

This burden is a blessing in disguise

Time has exploded; the future is now

This defies the laws of physics, but it happened somehow

We’re marching, we’re marching, we marching, we’re marching

We’re marching over the edge, left right left

For all, for all, a poetic kiss

For all, for all, a poetic kiss

Goodbye

Furor Poeticus

7. Tunes for Transition

Creativity just might save us

We can’t be saved now any other way

We can’t keep singing the same old songs

That brought us here

What we need are

Tunes for, we need tunes for transition

Naivety will not save us

We must create the taste by which we will be judged

We can’t keep singing the same old songs

That brought us here

What we need are

Tunes for, we need tunes for transition

TUNES FOR TRANSITION – To listen click here. (N.B. track 1 is at the bottom of the page)

The essay gives an account of the two years just past that I spent living in a small, self-constructed, inner city ‘shed’ in the backyard of a rental property tenanted by some friends of mine. In the final 12 months of this ‘simple living’ adventure I meticulously kept account of how much money I spent, which came to a total of $6,792. In the essay I try to summarize the main lessons I learnt on this journey, while also acknowledging the limitations of my experiment.

My living experiment in the shed came to an end a few months ago when the landlord ended the lease (for reasons other than my presence, I should add). By then I had already written and submitted this essay, so it is written from the perspective of my life inside the shed, looking out. The editor of the Concord Saunterer has suggested that I write a follow-up essay too, which I hope to begin work on sometime in the near future.

The essay can be downloaded here: Deconstructing-the-Shed-Samuel-Alexander

Dick Smith is one of those people very concerned – and quite rightly so – about population growth. In fact, last year he stated that he would be dedicating the rest of his life to fighting policy that encourages population growth. Mr Smith has even pledged $1,000,000 dollars in prize money to the young person (under thirty) who comes up with the most innovative solution to the problem of overpopulation (and related problems). This generous prize is the Wilberforce Award, and the prize money is intended to advance the innovative ideas being championed by the recipient of the award.

Without a touch irony, it can be said that nothing quite excites the soul of an advocate of voluntary simplicity, such as myself, more than the prospect of having lots of money to spend on promoting the idea that having lots of money is not so important. But alas, as I have not-so-long-ago left the category of ‘young person,’ as defined above, and now presumably fall into the category of ‘almost young person,’ I am ineligible to win the million dollars. Nevertheless, as the riddle at the heart of the Wilberforce Award has a solution, I thought it was only decent to publish the solution below in the hope that some enterprising ‘young person’ (note disparaging scare quotes) might take hold of this opportunity and win for themselves the million dollars.

To that individual, I sincerely wish you the best of luck, for the world will conspire against you; indeed, it is already conspiring against you.

Statement of the Problems and their Solution

The following argument is based on the I = PAT identity, which holds that ecological impact (I) is a function of population (P), Affluence (or consumption levels) (A), and Technology (T). Behaviour (B) could and probably should be added (I = BPAT), but for present purposes I won’t focus on that for the sake of, or perhaps at the expense of, simplicity. (Pun intended.)

The argument is as follows:

(1) The global economy is already in ecological overshoot, and by some way;

(2) The poorest individuals and nations on the planet have a right to a dignified standard of living, which means developing their economic capacities in some form and thereby almost certainly increasing their ecological impact as well;

(3) The world’s population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, further increasing ecological impact;

(4) Science and technology (T) are leading to ‘relative decoupling’ but not ‘absolute decoupling,’ meaning that science and technology are leading to a reduction in ecological impact per unit of economic output, but not a reduction in the overall ecological impact of the global economy, due to economic growth;

(5) Reducing population (P) is an extremely important part of reducing ecological impact (I), but even if the global population were stabilised tomorrow, the problems stated above would remain and overtime intensify due to economic growth;

(6) Furthermore, since ecological problems are global in nature (e.g. climate change, species extinction, etc.), limiting population in one nation through anti-immigration laws won’t in any way address the problems stated above

(7) Therefore, if the problems stated above are to be solved, it is absolutely necessary that people in affluent societies learn how to consume not just differently and more efficiently, but less (A and B);

(8) Only when affluent societies transcend their cultures of consumerism will an economy ‘beyond growth’ become a political possibility, and not just an ecological necessity; finally, if rich nations don’t learn how to stop growing their economies in a way that is deliberate and stable (rather than through unplanned recession or ecosystemic collapse), the future of our planet and our species is destined to be very grim – grim beyond historical precedent.

(9) In short, the solution to the problem of overpopulation requires addressing the problem of overconsumption, and the only adequate solution to the problem of overconsumption is to facilitate the emergence of ‘voluntary simplicity’ lifestyles of reduced and restrained consumption in affluent societies.

(10) Fortunately, lifestyles of voluntary simplicity are in our own immediate self-interest, as well as the planets’ interest, so the problem of overconsumption – in some strange way – isn’t really a ‘problem,’ as such.

Q.E.D.

So, there we have it – a simple solution to a complex non-problem. If perchance Dick Smith were unable to find someone in the category of ‘young person’ who is prepared to spend the million dollars on promoting this solution, then I would be prepared, somewhat reluctantly, to burden myself with the responsibility.

But all jokes aside. For two heavily footnoted and more comprehensive statements of the solution outlined above, see the recent publications available at the Simplicity Institute website here.

See also, ‘Will Science and Technology make Consumer Societies Sustainable?‘ and ‘The Scapegoat of Overpopulation‘

It’s probably also worth reading the clarifications to my position in the comments below.

[Futhermore, on 28 October 2011, George Monbiot just published the following article which supports my claim that consumption is a greater problem than population: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/10/27/its-the-rich-wot-gets-the-pleasure/]

Oil is the lifeblood of modern civilization. For one hundred and fifty years it has provided humankind with a cheap, portable, and highly charged source of energy. Almost every aspect of the economy today depends on oil, directly or indirectly, owing mainly to the importance of oil-dependent things like transport, mechanization, plastics, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, etc. to modern life.

Currently the world consumes approximately 89 million barrels of oil per day. That figure once again: 89 million barrels per day. I’m not sure about you, but that figure boggles my mind. Call it our addiction to oil. What would happen to the economy, one might ask, if the supply of oil stopped increasing and began to decline? Is there a chance of oil supply decreasing, and if so, when? These are the central questions of the peak oil debate.

Oil is finite resource, since it is non-renewable. For geological reasons, the extraction of oil from the ground generally follows a bell curve shape, with extraction increasing at first, then reaching a plateau, and then declining. That is, oil isn’t extracted at the same rate until the last drop of oil is consumed. Rather, over time, extracting the oil first gets easier, and then gets harder, and ultimately the extraction process slows down until it stops.

This has been shown to occur in every oil well ever drilled, and the same pattern also applies to nations. For example, oil production in the U.S. began in 1859, peaked around 1970, and has been on a downward trend ever since. Furthermore, a 2005 study by the Royal Swedish Academy (which bestows the Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics) reported that 55 of the world’s 65 largest oil-producing countries had reached maximum oil production or were in decline. As you will see from the resources below, there are many signs that the world is reaching, or has already reached, its peak of oil supply.

Demand for oil, however, is expected to keep growing in the future, mainly due to the rapid industrialization of nations like China, India, and Brazil. The most basic economic principles tell us that as the supply of a commodity decreases and demand increases, the price of that commodity will increase, perhaps exponentially. The issue is not that human beings will ever run out of oil, therefore; the issue is that we may soon run out of cheap oil.

And perhaps this possibility shouldn’t surprise us. Before we can extract oil we have to discover it, and world oil discovery peaked around 1965. Since that time, the trend has been to discover less oil each year, even though consumption of oil has steadily increased. (A useful analogy is a fruit tree: we pick the low hanging fruit first since that is the easiest, but once the easy stuff is gone, as time goes on it gets harder to find and pick the same amount of fruit. We’ve picked the low hanging fruit.)

Given how much money is involved in oil, you can be sure people have been looking for it, using the most sophisticated technology. Today, however, the world consumes approximately 3 barrels of oil for each barrel it discovers.  A moment’s thought tells us that we cannot keep consuming more than we find, and thus as oil reserves deplete while demand increases, oil prices inevitably will rise. Since almost everything in modern life is dependent on oil, high oil prices will resonate throughout the entire economy, leading to higher prices across the board. Over the last few years we have seen how fragile and delicate the global economic system is. What would happen to the global economy if the price of oil surged in coming years? Such a surge might be closer than any of us might like to think, a comment I don’t make lightly.

The Executive Director of the Post-Carbon Institute, Asher Miller, claims that peak oil ‘almost certainly’ occurred in 2008 (The Post-Carbon Reader, 2010, xiv). While there is still some debate about the exact date, it is now widely accepted that oil production, if it has not already peaked, will peak sometime in the foreseeable future, and then, after a short plateau, enter terminal decline. If this is indeed so, then we are at one of the greatest turning points in human history. And yet few people are aware of this.

My purpose in raising the issue of peak oil today is to highlight the fact that breaking free from industrial society’s addiction to oil will entail breaking free from high consumption lifestyles that in so many ways depend upon oil. The ‘Transition Initiatives,’ founded by Rob Hopkins, provide the most prominent example of people responding to peak oil at the grassroots level, and in their attempts to re-localize economies and become less oil-dependent those involved are in many ways exemplifying ‘simpler lives’ of reduced consumption. This is a strong indication that, if there is to be a voluntary transition to a world beyond cheap oil, it is very likely to be informed by the post-consumerist ethos of voluntary simplicity.

Moreover, as Ted Trainer has argued, renewable energy, even if it is embraced whole-heartedly and on a global scale, will never be able to sustain the universalization of high consumption consumer lifestyles, especially with the global population growing.[2] If Trainer is correct, and he presents a powerful case, this provides further grounds for thinking that the global consumer class will need to adopt simpler lifestyles of reduced consumption in the foreseeable future. Whether this transition occurs voluntarily or is imposed by force of biophysical limits remains to be seen. It scarcely needs remarking that a voluntary transition would be the desired path.

The peak oil debate quickly gets highly intricate, but exploring the resources below will provide a good grounding of the basic issues. For those who have not been exposed to the peak oil idea before, prepare to have your mind expanded in ways that are both stimulating and confronting. This is a subject that we are all going to be hearing a lot more about over the next decade. It urgently needs more attention. I encourage you to give it its due.

I hope the following resources are helpful. Do your own research, too. Now, more than ever, we must think for ourselves.

Here is a 5-minute video by Richard Heinberg introducing the subject of peak oil:

http://www.postcarbon.org/video/175694-the-ultimate-roller-coaster-ride-a

Here is another short introductory video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0z4rGCcyPs&feature=player_embedded

Here are three good introductory written statements of peak oil:

http://www.energybulletin.net/primer

http://odac-info.org/peak-oil-primer

http://peakoilquestionoftheday.blogspot.com/p/peak-oil-primer.html

Here is a more detailed but still comprehensible analysis of peak oil (it’s focused on the situation in Australia but for anyone new to the subject this article should prove useful):

https://www.tai.org.au/index.php?q=node%2F19&pubid=788&act=display

Here are some very good video interviews with leaders in the fields:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUmwy0VTnqM (20 minutes of interviews with various experts on the subject)

http://www.postcarbon.org/video/292412-life-after-growth-why-the-economy (part one of three, by Richard Heinberg)

http://www.postcarbon.org/video/293775-life-after-growth-why-the-economy (part two of three)

http://www.postcarbon.org/video/294194-life-after-growth-why-the-economy (part three of three)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeRTCepmkqQ (an interview with Richard Heinberg)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YvW3j2jYzY (a multi-part interview with Matt Simmons)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiJj06n58tU (a multi-part interview with Colin Campbell)

http://www.chrismartenson.com/page/crash-course-one-year-anniversary (see part 4 especially)

Here are 30 video clips related to peak oil:

http://www.scitechexplained.com/2010/12/30-videos-about-peak-oil-part-1/

http://www.scitechexplained.com/2010/12/30-videos-about-peak-oil-part-2/

For a discussion of the relationship between permaculture and peak oil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFjFG24BeX8

Here are two documentaries on peak oil:

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-end-of-suburbia/ (‘The End of Suburbia’)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sPDNR2YS3s

For a look at how Cuba survived peak oil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIC-0JYoDs8

If you want more video clips, here is an excellent resource:

http://www.postcarbon.org/media-library/

For the famous 1998 paper, ‘The End of Cheap Oil’:

http://dieoff.org/page140.pdf

Here is a list of some quotes on peak oil from important sources (including the International Energy Agency):

http://odac-info.org/peak-oil-quotes

Here is a short analysis of the International Energy Agency’s recent acknowledgement of the peak oil problem:

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil

Here is an animation of world oil production and consumption:

http://www.energypredicament.com/worldoil.htm

Here are some recent facts on peak oil to consider:

http://peakoil.com/production/some-updated-peak-oil-facts-to-consider/

Here are a few of the leading peak oil websites (at times technical):

http://www.energybulletin.net/peak_specific?page=1

http://peakoil.com/

http://www.postcarbon.org/media-library/

http://www.theoildrum.com/

http://www.peakoil.net/

For a discussion of the role oil played in the global financial crisis:

http://www.brookings.edu/economics/bpea/~/media/Files/Programs/ES/BPEA/2009_spring_bpea_papers/2009_spring_bpea_hamilton.pdf

For those who want to look into the subject in much more detail, here is a list of some of the most important documents related to peak oil (at times very technical):

http://odac-info.org/reports-resources

For some of the leading books on peak oil, see footnote 31-33 of the Simplicity Institute paper:

http://simplicityinstitute.org/pub/The-Voluntary-Simplicity-Movement.pdf

If I had to choose one book to recommend as a rigorous but accessible introduction:

Robert Hirsch, The Impending World Energy Mess (2010)

If you have any good links to add, please post a comment below with a sentence or two outlining the subject. A search online under ‘peak oil’ will also provide thousands of other links providing further information.

LESS CAN BE MORE, SIMPLICITY INSTITUTE REPORTS

We live in an age that faces many great problems, ranging from ecological overshoot, poverty, overpopulation, limits to economic growth, peak oil, and widespread consumer dissatisfaction. Promisingly, however, there is a quietly emerging social movement that provides a remarkably coherent and attractive lifestyle response to these and other contemporary challenges.

The Voluntary Simplicity Movement is a diverse social movement made up of people who are resisting high consumption lifestyles and who are seeking, in various ways, a lower consumption but higher quality of life alternative. By limiting their working hours, spending their money frugally and conscientiously, growing their own vegetables, riding bikes, rejecting high-fashion, and generally celebrating life outside the shopping mall, these people are new pioneers transitioning to a way of life beyond consumer culture.

The Simplicity Institute recently launched a multi-national online survey for the purpose of gaining empirical insight into this ‘post-consumerist’ social movement. Presently 1748 participants in the movement have completed the 50-question survey and that makes it the most extensive sociological examination of the movement available.

The results of the study are both fascinating and potentially important, as they offer a deep empirical insight into a social movement that is rethinking the question of how much money and how much stuff is ‘enough’ to live well. Some of the central findings of the study include:

• In the developed world the Voluntary Simplicity Movement is comprised of approximately 200 million people exploring ‘simpler lifestyles’ of reduced or restrained income and consumption.

• 87% of those who voluntarily choose to live more simply are happier for making the change, despite having less income. This suggests that reducing the environmental impact of our consumption habits may be in our own immediate self-interest as well as the planet’s interest. It also shows that there is a viable and desirable alternative to high consumption lifestyles.

• There is an emerging ‘group consciousness’ and political sensibility within the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, with 89% of participants stating that they would vote for a political party dedicated to promoting ‘simpler lifestyles.’ This suggests that the movement may become an important political force in the future.

The Simplicity Institute Report looks deeply into these and other research findings. The results of the study are freely available for download here.